Hamas managed to seize a major shipment of humanitarian aid that was delivered to Gaza from Jordan earlier this week, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Thursday, after the supplies were the first to be shipped to the enclave through a newly reopened Israeli border crossing.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken viewed the aid on Tuesday just before it departed from the headquarters of the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization in Amman bound for the renovated crossing into the Gaza Strip at Erez, which was largely destroyed by Hamas during its October 7 terror onslaught that sparked the ongoing war.

The reopening of Erez, Israel’s sole crossing on the northern edge of Gaza, had been a main plea of international aid agencies for months, to alleviate the humanitarian situation which is believed to be most severe among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the north of the enclave.